Every year when Christmas rolls around, you can bet your last penny that “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey will play non-stop on everyone’s playlist, every radio station, and basically anywhere that plays music. You walk into a store: “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is playing. You get into the car: “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is playing. You walk by a choir: “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is their choice of song. Everyone loves that song–unless, of course, you’re Mariah Carey, who has said she “hates” the song and the fact that she’s constantly going to be associated with Christmas for all of eternity because of it.
But, Mariah should be grateful that everyone loves this song because she’s bringing in an insane amount of money in royalties from the hit that premiered back in 1994. Honestly, if a song is still as popular as “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is over a decade later, you should consider your career done and made.
According to a new study from The Economist, since its premiere, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has raked in over $60 million for Carey in royalty payments. That’s sixty million dollars. On top of that, it’s part of Spotify’s “13 most popular Christmas songs” every year, and in 2017 it had over 210 million streams as the end of November. That’s not even counting December yet.
So, while Mariah hates being “the Queen of Christmas,” she’s making more money than we could ever dream of from this one simple song from the ’90s and, for that, we will always hate her.